Paradoxes of Catholicism eBook

Again, since she is organized on a supernatural basis,
there are supernatural elements in her own constitution
which she can no more modify than her dogmas.
Recently, in France, she was offered the kingdom
of this world if she would do so; it was proposed
to her that she actually retain her own wealth, her
churches and her houses, and yield up her principle
of spiritual appeal to the Vicar of Christ. If
she had been but human, how evident would have been
her duty! How inevitable that she should modify
her constitution in accordance with human ideas and
preserve her property intact! And how entirely
impossible such a bargain must be for a Society that
is divine as well as human!

Take courage then! We desire peace above all
things—­that is to say, the Peace of God,
not that peace which the world, since it can
give it, can also take away; not that peace
which depends on the harmony of nature with nature,
but of nature with grace.

Yet, so long as the world is divided in allegiance;
so long as the world, or a country, or a family, or
even an individual soul bases itself upon natural
principles divorced from divine, so long to that world,
that country, that family, and that human heart will
the supernatural religion of Catholicism bring not
peace, but a sword. And it will do so to
the end, up to the final world-shattering catastrophe
of Armageddon itself.

“I come,” cries the Rider on the White
Horse, “to bring Peace indeed, but a peace of
which the world cannot even dream; a peace built upon
the eternal foundations of God Himself, not upon the
shifting sands of human agreement. And until
that Vision dawns there must be war; until God’s
Peace descends indeed and is accepted, till then My
Garments must be splashed in blood and from My
Mouth comes forth not peace, but a two-edged sword.”

II

WEALTH AND POVERTY

Make to yourselves friends of the Mammon of iniquity.

You cannot serve God and Mammon.-LUKE XVI.
9, 13.

We have seen how the Church of the Prince of Peace
must continually be the centre of war. Let us
go on to consider how, as a Human Society dwelling
in this world, she must continually have her eyes fixed
upon the next, and how, as a Divine Society, she must
be open to the charge of worldliness.

I. (i) The charge is a very common one: “Look
at the extraordinary wealth and splendour that this
Church of the Poor Man of Nazareth constantly gathers
around her and ask yourself how she can dare to claim
to represent Him! Go through Holy Rome and see
how the richest and most elaborate buildings bear
over their gateways the heraldic emblems of Christ’s
Vicar! Go through any country which has not risen
in disgust and cast off the sham that calls herself
‘Christ’s Church’ and you will find
that no worldly official is so splendid as these heavenly
delegates of Jesus Christ, no palaces more glorious
than those in which they dwell who pretend to preach
Him who had not where to lay His head!